Ever wonder why the most irresistible novels often have the most despicable characters? Kimberla Lawson Roby’s latest, Changing Faces, features one of the nastiest creatures this reviewer has encountered in a long time. She’s Charisse Richardson, one of a trio of girlfriends who’ve known each other since school. Charisse is married, a mother and a regular churchgoer who revels in the word of the Lord. She’s also a psychopath: violent, judgmental, hypocritical, sadistic and pathologically dishonest. She wishes that her lovely daughter had never been born and that her husband was dead; as it is she can’t tolerate the fact that he’ll no longer allow her to micromanage his life. Her insistence that their marriage be run her way and her way only is so monstrously childish that it fascinates. Her mother is just about as hateful as she is, and Charisse is tormented, as far as she can be tormented by anything, by memories of dear mama Mattie Lee tossing a pot of boiling water on her father because he came home a little late. Charisse’s friends, the sweet, overweight Whitney and the brilliant Taylor, still love her, sort of she can be generous when she wants to be but even Whitney is running out of patience.
Whitney and Taylor have other problems, of course, almost all of them to do with men, and, in Whitney’s case, food. She falls hard for a handsome chap from her health club, but we know there’s going to be trouble when she sleeps with him within hours of their meeting. Taylor has a fibroid that puts her in the hospital and spooks her already skittish boyfriend will she have to have a hysterectomy and ruin their sex life? And is the partner at her law firm who used to give her such a hard time really changing his tune with those flowers he sends her when she’s laid up? Roby finds much sport in having these people treat each other horribly; her writing is infused with a sort of morose glee. At least one scene of amazing cruelty had this reviewer laughing out loud, guiltily. Changing Faces is vicious, compelling fun.
